ALL THE FEELS

It's been over a decade, over eleven years, over eleven years one month and days. Today, one month from what should have been his twenty-eighth birthday, I sat still and watched the latest Pink documentary. To be clear, I fckn love Pink. Her music helps me manage, helps me survive, and most importantly, helps me release the pressure valve when I least realize it needs releasing. I was prepared to love the doc, to learn more about her recent tour and her beautiful family. I figured there would be tears.

However, completely unprepared for feeling all the feels that watching 'All I know so far' tore from me. SO much love. Not just the love of music and performing, but love at so many levels. The family she's built from years of performing with the same people. The family she's built with her husband, son, and daughter. Seeing the reactions of fans as Pink performed, how she embraces all people and draws emotions from so many. Yeah, all those lovely bits had me tearing up.

Still, it wasn't that.

It was her children. It was Willow snuggling Jameson. It was the connection her daughter has with her son. It was the love of big sister for little brother, the looks, the hugs, the chasing, the trumpet lessons, the 'Mommas!' 

Oh, the 'Mommas' did me in, had me giving up on the soggy tissue I'd been using. The desire to tamp down or even temper my emotions crumpled as her children brought me back to long ago days with my own two little tow heads. I was sunk, lost in loss, grief washing over me with an intensity I haven't felt in a long, long time. 

I let it. I know enough after eleven years plus a month and extra days to recognize the necessity. 

I kept watching while grief pulled me down, far below sea level, into the depths that require people rise up slowly, in stages, to avoid debilitating pain.

I embraced the debilitation. 

I can now, because I know I am able to rise above, reach the place where my lungs will gratefully fill with oxygen, where the dark depths are left behind and sunshine warms my skin.

Today I felt all the feels, more powerful for its unexpected strike.

Oh, my darlings, let your hearts feel the feels. It matters, because the only way to get through it is to go through it. Allow your broken heart to cede to the dark pull, and sob and sniffle and hiccup your broken heart through the sadness and pain.

But then, look up. Notice how extraordinary the sky is, how the waves glimmer where they meet the sun. 

Rise up out of the depths. Suck oxygen into your lungs. Feel your heart expand.

Feel the feels and be stronger for all of them.

We've got this, we've got this, we've got this...together.